


a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [263]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Celegorm and Gwindor speak the same language, Gen, Set directly post Chap 4 of The Cold Heaven, Violence ahead, and slurs, discussion of trauma, so this was a joy to write, title from Siken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25179061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Celegorm comes to Gwindor for answers. Gwindor is not quite prepared to tell him everything.
Relationships: Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Gwindor, Celegorm | Turcafinwë & Maedhros | Maitimo, Gothmog (Lord of Balrogs) & Maedhros | Maitimo, Gwindor & Arien, Gwindor & Gothmog (Lord of Balrogs), Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [263]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	a niche in his chest where a heart would fit perfectly

Gwindor nearly stumbles as he makes his way along the hall. He thinks himself fortunate for encountering no one. He can, in peace, swipe at his tearing eyes and swallow down his sob.

It was never so, under Gothmog. There, grief or rage or gentleness were punished until they were no more.

Not until Russandol came—and even then, hadn’t Gwindor held fast to his early anger? His later concern?

_No. You were a plumb fool, and it saved you. He saved you._

Russandol saves people by making them love him. It is, to Gwindor’s mind, a dangerous game.

Once outside the walls of the fort, he considers the sound of voices—children’s voices—carrying through the air from the south, sunbathed wall. Estrela will likely be with them, and it is her whom he wishes to see. Her in whom he hopes to confide.

Stirred by this hope, he lurches forward, never even in his gait on new terrain because of his shoulder and what it’s done to his balance. Then he stops short, guilty to his center. It isn’t— _fair_ , to bring Estrela into this. She would understand what he wishes to pour out before her, she would understand _entirely_ , but if she is surrounded now by sunshine and child-laughter, why ought he to drag her out of that?

What, in bringing her into suffering, would he even say?

 _He’s seeing them. I know he’s seeing them, and it’s killing him by inches. He can’t even love the ones he loves, without it tormenting him. Christ, he’s rolled over by pain. He’s barely himself, some moments. We never seen him like this, Belle—we never—he was_ younger _then, somehow._

 _Hush_ , says Gelmir, ringing in his ears. 

Gelmir is almost a comfort now. Which is to say, Gelmir has come back to him, shadowy still but sweet-voiced, Gelmir with two hands and two eyes and a guileless smile that trusted Gwindor never to trust its promises. Such is the right of younger brothers—the self-evident truth. You die for them, you love them, and they are happy in their ignorant security. Anything else is heartbreak.

 _Well then. What am I to do?_ he asks this new-old Gelmir, just as he does without thinking, when Russandol seems ready to rattle the cage of his poor body. _What am I to do?_

They are not Fingon’s fault, the many pains of Russandol. It is all anything but Fingon’s fault, unless Fingon was obliged to slaughter his friend and cousin on the mountainside where those demons had prepared a ready sacrifice. Fingon did what no one, not even Gwindor-the-dead-boy’s-brother could: he kept on, and kept on. He walked through his valley of shadow, high in the clear, cold air of Diablo’s peak.

“Gwindor.”

His name is said, not with an overseer’s scorn, but with deep wariness. Lem was like that, only to lesser men. Russandol should have been like that, what with the trouble he’d seen. But Lem was too weak, and Russandol too much of himself, to face down _any_ opponent with a cold challenge, whether what was wanted was a battle or not.

Gwindor turns to face Celegorm.

He left this boy beside Russandol. This boy is a rough sort, and the trouble is, when Gwindor looks at him, he isn’t sure he sees a boy at all. He sees cold eyes under a broad brim. A hard mouth. Feels a hand first, driving down. Feels flesh tear, after.

_A boy. He’s a boy. Russandol’s boy._

“What is it?” Gwindor asks.

Celegorm sucks his teeth. He’s alone; not even his dog with him, and he’s thinking. Doesn’t want to ask a favor, then. Doesn’t want to be beholden. But who has ever been beholden to a slave?

 _You’re not a slave_ , Gelmir protests. _Just because they cut_ me _to bits—_

What did they see in Gwindor, worth saving? Worth _hating_ enough to save?

The scar round his throat, sunburned the same as the rest of his skin, and thus less visible, took a long while to make. Ankle shackle was a relief, in some ways. Strange how that is. How half-freedom looks like freedom, plain and bright, when you’ve forgotten what it is to live.

“I want to speak with you,” Celegorm mutters. He looks half-formed without the wolfhound next to him. “Not here.”

Gwindor has spoken his mind, on behalf of Russandol, enough to suspect that this brutish brother may not like him much. Still, the lad loves Russandol. Loves him fiercely, no words to say it with. Sticks close to his dog. Speaks with his eyes. Gwindor can understand that, even if he can’t understand much else about this hell-cursed family.

Therefore, he follows Celegorm around the far corner of Mithrim, where the land knuckles up in an unfriendly fashion. It reminds him of the so-called fields they sought out and dug, growing food for Gothmog’s men to eat. The memory of Lem flashes through him, second time in a few moments. Lem was a friend to him, low as he was.

That isn’t pride or shame talking, calling Lem _low._ All men are low, when they’re brought low.

“Watch me closely,” Celegorm says, and they pick their way up the steep slope in single file. Gwindor is out of breath when they reach a resting place, a dent in the ground behind a boulder, thrown down like a giant’s pebble.

“There are mines buried along the border of this land,” Celegorm observes, running his fingers through his tangled, tawny hair. “I know how they’re marked.”

Gwindor finds himself horribly fascinated by Russandol’s brothers’ hands. When they come in and out of the sickroom, brows furrowed and mouths bitten, not caring so much for _his_ comfort as for their own, Gwindor looks at their hands.

Are they like? Are they like?

So far, none are quite the same. Celegorm’s are less delicate, though the shape is more or less familiar.

“Did you bring me here to tell me of the mines?” he asks. Not insolent, but challenging. This boy isn’t going to beat him. Isn’t going to kill him, not today. Gwindor can afford a little lip.

A squinting, suspicious glance. “No.”

Gwindor waits. Wind’s a little stiffer up here; feels fresh on his face. It’s warmer than the Mountain, no matter how chill it blows.

Celegorm says, “What the fuck did they do to him?”

Gwindor wouldn’t know where to begin, even if he was inclined to spill his innards. Start with the chains dragging down a stone hall, the ragged red head bent low? Start with grinning, bleeding silver round his mouth? Start with Lem kicking him down, Gwindor standing by, hating him enough to—to—

_God bless me, Red. It’s really you._

He’s gone so weak here. So weak. He has to press his fist against his lips, sink his teeth in. And even that is too much, because it reminds him of the comfort Russandol used to take from his own hands.

Celegorm is surprisingly patient with his silence. Not done saying _his_ piece yet, it seems. “I’ve seen it all,” he says. “How they tore the flesh off him. How they—chopped him up. Animals—shit-livered— _animals_ —”

_Were we that lucky?_

Oh, there’s nothing like what you had in the past. Makes you see freedom all, all, all wrong.

“I was there for some of it, it’s true.” Gwindor hears himself say that.

“Then tell me.” Celegorm snaps his head away, hair streaming past his proud cheek. Hiding.

“Why do you want to know?” Gwindor isn’t clever, isn’t always as loyal as he wants to be.

(Gelmir. Haldar. Dead boys, who were his to protect.)

(Russandol, all that’s left of him, _living_.)

Celegorm’s voice rails and recedes with the wind. “I can’t help him without knowing.”

Gwindor thinks of Fingolfin, the kindest eyes he’s ever seen, outside of Estrela’s lonely one. Thinks of Fingon, doing what he did. _They_ helped without knowing. Estrela _knew_ Russandol, some way, without knowing him. Knew him by his scars, and the goodness that was in him, underneath. .

Gwindor urges, “You can.”

Celegorm has Russandol’s nose. Not his hands, not his eyes, but against this winter sunlight, his profile is astonishingly like.

“Not your place,” Celegorm says coldly. “To tell me what I can and cannot do.”

Gwindor considers. How much is betrayal? How much would Russandol expect him to hide? No—Russandol’s expectations, his beliefs about what he is owed, are no man’s measure but a blind one’s. Russandol has little use for his own dignity, his own peace. Yet, he keeps his secrets. Yet, he can be hurt.

“Why don’t you tell me, first,” Gwindor hazards, struck with a sudden idea that may get him kicked down the hill for his troubles, “What in tarnation you lot got tangled in, coming here?”

Celegorm frowns, deep as a chisel-cut. Then his gaze, turned to Gwindor, shades shrewd. Traces of that other brother, Curufin, the one that looks like he’s half made of metal. “A bargain, then. I’ll tell you something, you tell me something.”

It’s a fair bargain. A fair bargain, and a cruel one. Gwindor’s been party to enough of those to recognize them wherever they appear. Remembers Russandol hefting the unbearable weight of a whip, remembers when it wasn’t Russandol, beating on him.

“You first.”

Celegorm shrugs. “My father wanted to come and find gold. Melkor Bauglir followed him.”

“Why?”

“Well, because my father was an Irishman, of course. And a right bastard when he wanted to be. Irish bastards do get under the skin of rich, spongy fucks, don’t they?”

Gwindor isn’t Irish. Wasn’t Irish. Man of no country, now. “I reckon so.”

Celegorm continues. “You knew my brother.” Pride’s still there. Sharpened by pain, same as Gelmir’s name would be in Gwindor’s mouth, if he spoke it. “Everyone fucking loved him. He’s a shot. He’s a knife-hand. Lick you at anything. Still love him, they did.”

 _Worth loving enough to hate_ , Gwindor thinks, twisting it all around.

“‘Cept for that one. The spongy fuck, whoever he is.” He sniffs harshly. “Bauglir.”

“You don’t know him?”

“No. Only the name.” There’s a little discomfit there. A dislike in admitting, as he must, that he is young.

But here is something that Gwindor can give.

“He’s a monster. You know that. But it’s—he’s not like other men. Spongy fuck, dead certain. But one with a whole blamed world in his hands. How he got it, I don’t know. They took me…it’s been years, now.” That’s all he’ll say on the subject. “They took me, and worked me. I wasn’t a favored one. That’s the sort of description he’d give it, you see. _Favored one._ Saved me…some marks, not others. I was good enough with stone-cutting, though.” _Once they let me off the leash._ “Saw him—Bauglir—when he was prospecting land…that was three, four years past. Saw him again when he had me crewing his damned palace.”

Celegorm’s face is not at rest. It can’t be. But it’s _settled_. He’s drinking up every word like a dying man laps at water.

“Blasted a hole in the side of a mountain, he did. Then he wanted it fitted out worthy for a king. Madness in _that_ , isn’t there? But who’s to stop him?” Gwindor shakes his head. “He’s an army of paid men, and another of slaves. You didn’t rescue all of us.”

Celegorm flinches.

Gwindor forgot, till then, that he was talking to one of the Mithrim-rats, one that hadn’t been with Fingolfin’s party. Haleth’s party.

“Palace, hey?” Celegorm demands, forcing his way past whatever sore spot Gwindor touched. “You an architect, then?”

“Not by half.”

“Know enough to tell me how to tear the place apart?”

“If you could reach it, but that’s nigh impossible.” Gwindor flicks his eyes east, just a moment, but there’s forests and hills between here and there. He ponders his next thought. “It’s high. High and—”

“Never mind that,” Celegorm says impatiently, waving a hand. “Tell me more about Bauglir.”

“He had your brother for months. I didn’t see him until…” Here it is, the chance of betrayal. “He wasn’t hurt, when you last—”

“Of course not.” Sharp enough to draw blood, this time. “Cut off his hair, too, did they?”

“I don’t know,” Gwindor replies, surprised by the question. “Why?”

Celegorm shrugs again, tight-shouldered. “Just wondering.”

Gwindor ponders. “I suppose so. It was cropped almost to his scalp, at first—don’t suppose he wore it so, here.”

Celegorm’s look is answer enough. “I’ll scalp them.” He smiles. A terrifying sight. “Go on.”

“Bauglir kept him in his mountain, but it was Mairon who—who sliced into him. That’s his work, plain as day.” Gelmir flickers in his mind’s eye, his face whole and comforting, but Gwindor isn’t Gelmir, isn’t a kind sort of ghost to himself. If Gelmir won’t show him ravaged eye-sockets, Gwindor will call them to mind, talking like this. “Maybe they punished him because of your father.”

Celegorm scorns that lie. Gwindor thinks of _whore_ , writ in red, thinks of _will you not come back to me_ , and recants.

“I’ll admit, it seemed like more than that.” He swallows hard, and Gelmir fades away. “But that’s Russandol’s story to tell.”

Celegorm doesn’t argue with that. Doesn’t agree with it, either. “Why d’you all call him Russandol?”

“Sticks named him.”

Celegorm nods, fitting a peg in place. “The little she-wolf?”

Gwindor has to smile at that. “Yes.”

Celegorm rests his elbow on one bent knee and anchors his thumbnail between his teeth. “So. You didn’t know his name.”

“No.”

_Maitimo…my arrogant one._

“What did they call him, then? Before.”

“Nothing pleasant. Guards, that is. Some of us called him Red.” Gwindor shouldn’t be a coward, not here and now, when a brother has placed trust in him. But he is fairly certain that if he admits to his past treatment of Russandol, he’ll breathe his last overlooking Mithrim and a grey-gold sky.

Celegorm subsides. “So he came down to you, after Bauglir—after Bauglir was—” Doesn’t want to finish that, plainly. “Why? Why’d he come down?”

“Never told me.” It’s the truth. “Your brother kept his secrets. Had to.”

Celegorm releases his thumb. “All right. My turn again, eh? We had trouble all our way west. Won out, too. When we landed here, Ath—we used to go by night. Shit on his railroad, see? Burned down his guardhouse.” He stops there, for a long enough moment that Gwindor feels the loss. “But it wasn’t _his_ guardhouse. Wasn’t Bauglir’s.”

The cold eyes. The heavy hand.

“It was Gothmog’s.” Celegorm’s eyes bore into him. Green-tinged. Different. “Gothmog was your master, wasn’t he?”

Gwindor isn’t betraying anyone, stating that bald fact. “Yes.”

Celegorm smiles. No humor in it. “Gothmog killed our father,” he says. “And the guardhouse burned around his ears. Feanor didn’t bleed much. Not in front of him. Maybe that wasn’t enough. Feanor.”

“What are you asking?”

“Who had the greater grudge against Maedhros? Bauglir or Gothmog?”

This must be what it is— _was_ —like in Russandol’s mind. Of course, Gwindor doesn’t have as much as a candle for that darkness, now. Can’t even fathom the length of that night. But Russandol, plotting, his arm chained to the forge-bench, the rest of him chained to pain wherever he went—

Russandol must have thought like this. Must have asked these sort of questions, quiet and to himself, as the world punished him over and over again.

The world didn’t beat him, though—not until he’d _won_.

_Everyone fucking loved him._

“It’s not like what you’re thinking,” Gwindor says at last, treading on uncertain ground. Ground like this, if this stony earth was like to open up and pincer him in granite jaws. “Not with Gothmog, at least.”

“What was it like, then?”

“Gothmog burned his own guardhouse down, too. When…well, Russandol helped launch a mutiny, you see.”

Celegorm’s smile has humor in it, now. Humor and fondness, deep as oceans. “He would.”

“Gothmog wouldn’t care about timber. Men. Hell, I don’t even know if he cares about…about pride. He’s not like—it’s all a _game_ with Bauglir, all a game of begging and—” He’s saying too much, giving too much. _Slowly, you fool. Slowly. This one’s a fox_.

“Gothmog didn’t have a game, then.”

“He did. Just a different one. You could…you could prove yourself, to Gothmog.”

_Stay down, Soldier._

_Stay down, dog._

“Prove yourself?” Celegorm, more wolf than anything else, is too free to parse freedom. He doesn’t understand.

Gwindor is sweating a little around the collar of his borrowed shirt. “Work hard. Keep your mouth shut. Fight for him, if he asked.” He heaves a gust of breath. “But Russandol did all _that_. Only, he—he couldn’t hide, not completely, that he was thinking for himself.”

“And Gothmog?”

Celegorm has seen Gothmog. Gwindor marks recognition in him.

“Gothmog…”And this isn’t a secret, it’s known by Estrela and the children, known by all the thralls that Haleth took south… “Punished him for it.”

“How?”

“Before all of us, that’s how. You’ve seen his back.”

“He whipped him.” Celegorm spits the words, and then outright spits, hatefully, in the dust. “For what? Having a brain?”

“Using it, more like. And a heart. He—” But Gwindor can’t tell the story of Haldar, or he’ll break. “He defended the little ones, always. That usually put him in harm’s way.”

“And where were you?”

He wasn’t expecting that question. Gwindor has to take it in, has to choke it down. “I was the dog,” he says. “Working hard. Mouth shut.”

“Coward,” Celegorm scoffs. “Well, so be it. Most men are.” He looks thoughtful, then haunted, then he starts up again. “So, Gothmog. Hated him. More than Bauglir?”

 _Hated? Bauglir was damn fascinated by him._ “Choose your devil,” Gwindor says flatly. “They all liked to torment him in their own way. Are you glad to know it? Does it help you to treat him well?”

“It doesn’t add together,” Celegorm mutters, ignoring the question. The challenge. “He’s…he’s himself.”

_God bless me, Red. It’s—_

“Himself?”

The boy—and he _is_ a boy, for all that he’s a tempest and a howl and an orphan son—comes apart quite quietly. His face is open. “Maedhros _won_. He got the lot of you out. He…he went back for the pups, ‘cause of course he fucking did, but he…if he fought all that time, why did he let them—” 

“He didn’t _let_ them do anything. It couldn’t be helped. He’s one man.”

“He’s Maitimo,” Celegorm says, dark with affection. Then, darkness alone: “Don’t lie to me. Mairon’s knife or not, whose order carved it into him?”

Gwindor is silent.

“That’s what they called him, isn’t it? The guards. You, maybe. I can see the shame written over you. A dog follows where its master leads. Then tell me, Gothmog’s dog. _Tell me who made my brother a whore_.”

Gwindor does not challenge, now. Cannot challenge someone who aches and bleeds over a world they never lived. What has he to offer Celegorm, but the awful, quiet truth?

“He came with that scar,” he says, low enough that Celegorm must lean forward to hear him, amid the tear of the wind. “If that’s what you mean. One of a long list, it was. I ain’t know—or pretend to know—what makes a man treat another creature so, but…” And this is true, it _is_ true, and it is not betrayal: “He never gave me reason to believe it was more than a vicious jest. An insult. Meant to make us treat him foul, when he came down to be common with us. And we did. Lord help us, we did.”

Celegorm is like stone.

Gwindor grasps through thin air for a hero. “Estrela didn’t.”

Stone stirs. “Because Mairon took her eye.”

“Yes. And she’s good. Better than me. Braver than me. Guessed your brother’s mettle at once.”

“Ugly as sin,” Celegorm says, soft like a knife to the belly. “Isn’t that the idea?” He sounds suddenly quite tired, as if the rage that lit him like a torch has been quenched. Blown out, perhaps, by this endless, layered wind.

Then, an equally abrupt change, he pushes himself to his feet.

“We ought to be getting back. Maitimo’ll miss us.”

Gwindor’s mouth is dry. The breeze whines in his ears.

Celegorm looks expectantly at him over his shoulder. “The fucker called him that, didn’t he? Maitimo. When he says _him_ , he means…”

Gwindor nods. Can’t speak, anymore.

“Christ.” Celegorm shakes his head. Starts a mountain-goat descent—graceful, despite the necessary canter. Doesn’t look behind him, doesn’t wait for Gwindor.

Seems both older and younger, what with his back turned and the sun slanting in Gwindor’s eyes.


End file.
